Huynh Kim Chi, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Flour Corporation, introduces the company’s fresh dragon fruit noodles to customer on the sidelines of a conference held in HCM City last week. (Photo: VNA) HCM City (VNS/VNA)- The Vietnam Flour Corporation (Vikybomi) has created new food products madefrom wheat flour and farm produce such as dragon fruit and watermelon amid areduction in fruit exports to China.
Huynh Kim Chi, company chairwoman, said that her company had successfully comeup with a recipe for fresh dragon fruit noodles, which are selling well at anoodle shop in Can Tho city.
Due to the nature of her business, which supplies flour materials, her companywould not sell fresh dragon fruit noodles directly to consumers, but wouldtransfer the recipe for free to manufacturers to help consume more dragonfruits.
In the future the company would create more new recipes with farm produce, shesaid.
Chu Tien Dung, chairman of the HCM City Union of Business Associations, saidexports of Vietnamese farm produce, especially dragon fruit and watermelon, hadfallen because of the Covid-19 epidemic's effect on trade with China, thelargest buyer for the products.
To help farmers make use of their products, many businesses had created newproducts using dragon fruit and watermelon, gaining positive results, he said.
Le Duy Toan, director of Duy Anh Foods Import Export Co. Ltd, said his companyhad experience in producing rice-based products that use vegetables and tuberssuch as beetroot, carrot and black sesame.
“When we heard that Vietnamese farm produce faced problems in consumption, weconducted research to develop new products using watermelon and dragon fruitfor the domestic market and for exports.
“This will, on one hand, help us diversify our product portfolio, and, on theother hand, support consumption of farmers’ produce.”
The company’s watermelon-rice vermicelli and dragon-fruit rice paper areexported to the Republic of Korea, Japan and Australia. Sales of the productsin the domestic market are also going very well.
His company was using 1.2-1.5 tonnes of watermelon and 300 kilogrammes ofdragon fruit a day, he said. If demand goes up, the figure could rise.
He also revealed that “In the long term, his company plans to cooperate withfarmers to cultivate watermelon and buy all of the fruit after harvesting.”
In addition, the company was conducting research to produce items that usebananas and pumpkin, he added.
ABC Bakery has succeeded in creating a new type of bread that used up tonnes ofdragon fruit. The bright pink dragon fruit bread became an instant hit, withconsumers forming long lines to buy the product.
In the first 10 days of making the new product, the company bought nearly 30tonnes of dragon fruit from farmers and supplied about 30,000 loaves of dragonfruit bread to the market.
Kao Sieu Luc, general director of ABC Bakery, said he wanted to share therecipe of making dragon fruit bread to other bakeries to help farmers.
After his success with dragon fruit bread, Luc created bread using dragon fruitand durian, which was popular with customers who queued up to buy it.
“In addition to the two new types of bread, I have experimented with makingbread using watermelon and banana, but with our production chain running atfull capacity now, we have not produced and sold the watermelon and bananabread yet.”/.
VNA
